


A little girl whose name was not Gamora

by LectorEl



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, Gen, in that it's a monologue where Gamora is pretending her life happened to somebody else, very technically first person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-08
Updated: 2014-09-08
Packaged: 2018-02-16 14:46:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2273739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LectorEl/pseuds/LectorEl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Women like me are always asked, 'why did you stay?'<br/>It seems that nobody ever wants to hear the answer.</p><p>Gamora speaks of her past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A little girl whose name was not Gamora

Once upon a time -

Perhaps that's not the proper start for this story. But it is a story that is hard to tell, and these little distances are what make it bearable. So once upon a time, there was a family. And in that family, there was a little girl whose name was not Gamora. I've forgotten what it was. It was short, and sounded similar to the name of the birds that lived in our – in her family's garden.

She was – she was very young, when Thanos came to her planet. When the screaming started, and her father ordered her to run, in a voice so alien she couldn't recognize it. She ran, her and her little brothers, leaving behind her the house and garden where she had grown.

Running didn't help her. The soldiers caught them, and swept them away, to cages inside a vast ship, torn apart, never to see each other again. The air was thick and burning hot, down there in the bowels of that vast, dark ship. There was no food, no water. Only the darkness and the press of bodies crowded in too close.

It took no time at all, for the deaths to start. The little girl was nearly one of them, crushed against the bars of her cage by the corpse beside her. She was delirious when they pulled her from that box of corpses, crazed enough by the death around her to lash out with her pitiful nails and teeth.

The soldiers laughed.

I remember that sound, no matter how I try to forget it. The days and weeks after, the beatings and the blood and the rage which grew each day, that all blurs in memory, but the laughter never fades. Never, ever, not in my nightmares, or the hollow places left inside of me. Only Nebula could silence it, back when we were young, clinging to each other in that place of horrors -

This is a hard story to tell, I said that before. The words burn my throat, and I do not want these memories. But you need to understand.

Let me start again. They brought the little girl, and thousands of children like her, to one of the camps where Thanos' soldiers were raised. That was what they had become, soldiers for the monster's army.

They named her 'Gamora' there. Named may be a bit of a misleading term – 'Gamora' was the name of a common pest in the training camp, a serpentine native creature with a poisonous bite that could kill the smaller children. She took the name as her own, an insult turned to identity.

Many died. The girl wasn't one of them. It was rage that drove her on, rage and hate and grief, which kept her moving long past when others fell. And that was how she attracted Thanos' attention, that day he visited the camps. If she had known better -

No, I suppose it wouldn't have mattered. She was a feral thing, more animal than person, and presented with that opportunity -

A guard was careless. For a fraction of a moment, distracted by Thanos' presence, no more. That was all the girl needed, to strike with nails and teeth made deadly by the poisonous rage bubbling inside her. She tore out his throat while Thanos watched.

Thanos ordered her whipped for her act. Thirty lashes, or fifty, or maybe less. The number is not so important as the fact it was more than she had ever taken.

She wasn't brave. She was a child half-mad from the forces inside her, and she howled like a dog when the whip landed. But at the end, when she hung by her wrists from that post, her blood spilling across the mud, she stared at the guard's body, and smiled.

That was it. Her damnation. Thanos saw.

He saw, and he approved, and he decided to test the girl, to see how far this feral creature would go. She was given a loaded gun, and a simple order: to shoot, until the bullets were gone. Every guard or soldier killed would earn her another lashing like what she had just endured. Every missed shot, a week in isolation. Which left her one target which would earn no punishment: her fellow prisoners. Or so it seemed, in that moment.

You do see the twist coming, I suppose? The gun had ten bullets. All ten lodged themselves in Thanos' chest.

He smiled. He smiled, and he lifted the girl, that little girl, into his arms, braced her against his shoulder, and said these words: 'My daughter is bold.'

The girl slept that night in Thanos' lap, too weary to resist the warmth even in her terror. Everything was different after that. She was still trained to fight and kill, still faced with brutal punishments. But now she had a bed of her own, and a place at Thanos' table.

Sometimes, I think – I fear – I do not know which – that he loved her. He taught her to fly, gave her the open sky and the endless black. He remade her, from bone outward, like a forge burning away impurities.

Sometimes, moments so rare and fragile, he would do things for her, things that had nothing to do with making her a weapon. He'd comb her hair, and tell her stories of his love, Death, for whom he did so many things.

And sometimes, she truly felt like his daughter, like the child of him and his mistress Death. She dreamed of a pale woman who kissed her cheeks and whispered praise, and woke to sheets stained with tears. Because this is the most horrid and awful thing: she loved him. Not sometimes, not at moments, but always, an ache like emptiness inside her. She hated him, dully, distantly, in the way she felt most things, but her love was always there.

She lived like that, trapped in that place between painful love and hate so dull it had become duty, until Ronan. Until the promise of a planet's end, and she discovered she still had heart enough to break.

And that is who I am, Peter Quill. That is why I didn't leave. Because I am the monster's daughter, fool enough to love him.


End file.
